As I’ve been working through the process of getting rid of the excess in my house, I’ve been running across some things that I didn’t even know I had. One of my new habits to help remove clutter is each week when it’s time to put the garbage and recycling out on the curb, I scour the house determined to find a few extra things that I can get rid of. Even if it’s just some of the leftover Halloween/Christmas/Valentine’s Day candy (admit it, you do it too), I don’t stop until there’s at least something extra out on the curb that I hadn’t thought about getting rid of. In my small town, each week on trash collection day, there are always one or two trucks wandering the neighborhood looking for scrap metal to recycle or anything else that might be useful. They’re a little like the Tooth Fairy. You don’t see them but you know when they’ve been to your house. The difference is that instead of taking a tooth and leaving money, they just take away that old junk you left on the curb and turn it into money for themselves. OK. Maybe they’re not like the Tooth Fairy at all, but the point is that I can put just about anything on front of my house made of metal and it will disappear. Even if it’s not metal, someone will usually find a use for it. A few weeks ago I was performing my usual trash day routine while the kids were getting ready for bed. I felt like a burglar sneaking around the house looking for anything I could get rid of regardless of who it belonged to. For some reason, my kids don’t share my passion for decluttering. I did throw out some candy that night, but I also went down into my “workshop” to look around. I use the word in quotations because it’s been a long time since any actual work has been accomplished in this room even though all of my tools are in there. I realized on one of the pegboard walls were two hooks set up like a shelf with a pile of things on it that I never touched. In fact, some of the items had been there when we moved into the house 12 years ago! I started grabbing things and soon found myself with about a dozen old curtain rods on the floor. I piled them all on the ground next to the trash can and miraculously they were all gone the next morning. Some other things I found lately just in my “workshop” are: some random pieces of wood that I saved for now, a LOT of Amazon boxes which made me think about just how much stuff we’ve purchased in the last year, and an old mop that I also put outside because it was mostly metal. I cut up all but a few of the boxes and recycled them. For the first time in a very long time, I can actually walk around my table saw in the middle of the room and someday soon maybe I’ll even be able to use those tools.

Anyone else find something weird you didn’t know you had while clearing out old junk?

This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.